Quotes on Inalienable Rights

The United States was founded on the idea that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, and that principle has allowed us to work to perfect our union at home while standing as a beacon of hope to the world. Today, that principle is embodied in agreements Americans helped forge - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and treaties against torture and genocide - and it unites us with people from every country and culture.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

A child, like all other human beings, has inalienable rights.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.